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March 28, 2012

This time of year I try to fit in a unit on Creativity and Design in the 4th grade classes. I started the unit last week with an exploration of Lego Digital Designer. This is the first step of unit that is about exploration, self-discovery and creating using design tools. The next couple of weeks will be spent moving on to Scratch. Some of the students have been attending an after school class through Yarmouth Community Services with a more extended time to explore this theme. The students who have been in the after school class have been a stimulant to their classmates to explore and learn during our class periods. What did I hear from a student as they filed out of the lab? "Thank you Mrs. Wolinsky for letting us explore today!"

March 16, 2012

Once again we organized an "unconference" for our spring professional development day that started with a keynote by Wes Fryer, followed by a selection of sessions by Wes and Yarmouth faculty. The site for the course is: Yarmouth Learning with Media Day. I created a summary of the feedback from the day which was very positive about the opportunity to work as a K12 faculty on enhancing the ways we use media, ourselves and with our students.

March 10, 2012

This summit was an "unconference" in the sense that presentations were by participants, not paid presenters. The Burlington, MA school system has been moving into mobile technology with 1:1 iPads in the high school this year, sets of iPads in the elementary schools and a review of options for the future for middle schools. Alice, Mike and I attended with Ben McNaboe (YHS class of 2011) to share our experience of 1:1 in our grades 7-12 for over ten years. Ben also presented his own session on how useful he finds an iPad to be in his freshman year of college. I attended a session with other elementary educators who are using iPads and we had a rousing lunchtime "smackdown" of app ideas.

This post from the BHS principal Patrick Larkin is a good synopsis of the philosophy and information that were shared at the summit. Burlington has many of the needed elements for moving forward with powerful learning through the use of iPads: strong administrative support and involvement, robust support for infrastructure, involved teachers developing online materials, interest in moving to a facilitated learning environment, student IT team to support teachers, supports and play a role in the new implementation.

March 1, 2012

We are halfway through a Community Services Class title "Creativity & Design with Technology" for 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders. This is a class I have thought about offering for a long time as a way to explore creative options using technology in a more extended format than we have time for in the school day. There was a great deal of interest in the class and the original limit was extended from 12 to 15 to the current 17 participants (12 boys and 5 girls). I am maintaining a web page of the sessions that hopefully encourages students and families to continue to explore at home.The site link is: https://sites.google.com/a/yarmouthschools.org/yestech/creativity-design and this is the content so far:

I came across this site which has provided resources and inspiration for this course:

http://www.computersforcreativity.com. It has been very helpful to have two YHS students help during each class session and a fourth grade student who attended Scratch camp at MIT last summer has been a guest teacher for the last two sessions. The experiences weare having in this class will impact the "creativity & innovation" mini-units that I usuallyteach in the spring to all grade levels.

Some other links that I hope to use for ideas to continue this into the future are:

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About Me

I am an instructional technology educator teaching and learning at Yarmouth Elementary School, Yarmouth, ME. For more on what students are learning through digital media go to our YES technology site. I enjoy collaborating, learning and sharing with other educators, parents and students of all ages. The opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the Yarmouth School District.